Tagged: ComicMix

Review: ‘Jack Kirby’s OMAC: One Man Army Corps Omnibus’

omac-2752411In the four volumes of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World omnibuses DC recently released, there’s a not-so-coincidental trend of the introductions being more thought-provoking than the comics themselves.

During this latest run of Kirby nostalgia, most recently marked by this week’s release of his OMAC omnibus ($24.99), some of the smartest folks in comics have jumped at the chance to write at length about the King’s deep philosophical messages and revolutionary narrative approaches.

Thank God there’s none of that on hand in the OMAC collection (Mark Evanier’s introduction is more behind-the-scenes insight than anything). OMAC was a simple enough creation, a mutation of Kirby’s unrealized story of Captain America in the future.

Buddy Blank is an average Joe in The Future who has the fortune of being randomly picked by a super satellite to be zapped and turned into a heroic brute with a mohawk. Why the mohawk? We may never know.

OMAC never really trucks in the existentialism or social mirroring of Fourth World, which too often became jumbled and rambling when it strived for deep and contemplative. OMAC was, as Evanier writes, a creation born of the necessity of Kirby’s contract, which demanded a whopping 15 pages a week! (And you wondered why some of his stories feel rushed.)

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Are We There Yet? by Martha Thomases

interview-suit-2896937Every week when I’m considering a subject for my column, I look at the newspapers and the comic books cluttering up my living room. Perhaps this will be the week in which there is a perfect synchronization between the real world and the graphic world! Perhaps a team of comic book writers, artists and editors will perfectly capture the zeitgeist that is our national condition!

Perhaps this primary season will finally end.

I like elections. I like voting. I vote every chance I get. Because I live in New York, I’m accustomed to my primary vote not counting very much. I vote anyway. I voted for candidates I knew would lose, just because I wanted the Democratic Party to know there was a bloc of support for those positions. I’ve voted for Bella Abzug, Al Sharpton and Jonathan Tasini for Senate. I voted for George McGovern, Jesse Jackson and Edward Kennedy for President. I voted for Ruth Messinger for Mayor. I voted even though none of them had a prayer. When I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and he won, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

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The Weekly Haul: Reviews for May 30, 2008

First things first, a rant. This was a banner week for comics (and don’t those always fall after a holiday, postponing releases ’til Thursday?), but I have a pretty substantial bone to pick. This week’s comics were rife with price-gouging from both DC and Marvel, with pointless cost hikes on several issues. The only semi-understandable $3.99 tag came with Final Crisis, which I reviewed on its own right here.

Now, rant aside, the reviews…

northlanders6-5651961Book of the Week: Northlanders #6 #6 — Brian Wood’s series of Scandinavian mayhem has been hit and miss, but this issue’s on target like a broadsword to the brain. Sven continues to kill as many of Gorm’s allies as he can, brought to life with gloriously gory art.

But the key to this issue is how it’s gradually pulling Sven away from his mindless pursuit of revenge, even if it happens with a way too convenient to plot development.

It’s the story of a leader’s birth, but instead of being told through the rosy view of history and legend, it’s an ugly, bitter and brutal story. It could yet turn into a truly great series, as long as it doesn’t stray too far into the trite territory of Braveheart.

Runners Up:

Thor #9 — J. Michael Straczynski is doing so many things right in this book that it’s impossible to single any one of them out as central to the series’ success. Moving the plot in a new direction, he has Loki playing the Asgardian angles for the umpteenth time, only it’s so sly and written so well that it feels completely fresh, and not just because Loki’s now a woman.

The best moments come from the odd and awkward interactions between the Asgardians and the real world, which is now their world: an awkward love connection between god and mortal and the priceless image of two gods stuck in a small town jail after they had a too-public rumble with some monsters.

Green Lantern #31 — The origin of Hal Jordan as Green Lantern continues, and it’s the same balance of good and bad. On the one hand, Geoff Johns is covering ground that’s been covered too many times already, with Jordan getting his ring and starting training on Oa.

As boring as those moments are, the hidden part of the origin, the shadowy "Darkest Night" prophecy, continues to be endlessly interesting. It draws in so many unexplored pieces of Jordan’s and Sinestro’s backgrounds that it’s a shame Johns decides to waste time on the known aspects.

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Review: Final Crisis #1, by Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones

finalcrisis-1-7954193 Before we even get started here: SPOILER WARNING!

(So don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

DC’s tentpole summer event, Final Crisis, is finally here, and it couldn’t be more of an antithesis to Marvel’s Secret Invasion. While the latter has been a wall-to-wall action blowout, Final Crisis has kicked off with a rambling, contemplative first issue.

Of course, you know the score with Grant Morrison at the helm, and he’s predictably vague and cutesy. And the very first pages fit right into expectations, with a meeting between Anthro and Metron at the dawn of man that alludes to great depth, if not actually providing it.

From there, the book bounces maddeningly from spot to spot, never settling enough to develop a rhthym, or give a firm footing to readers.

There’s Turpin and the Question looking over Orion’s dead remains. There are the Green Lanterns talking in binary (“1011” signals a god’s death). There are heroes and villains fighting over Metron’s chair. There are the villains uniting for the umpteenth time. And…

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Review: ‘Batman Grendel’ by Matt Wagner

 batman-grendel-4721219Batman Grendel
By Matt Wagner
DC Comics/Dark Horse, February 2008, $19.95

[[[Batman Grendel]]] collects two short series – each one was just two 50-page issues long – originally titled [[[Batman/Grendel]]] and [[[Batman/Grendel II]]]. The slash has disappeared for the collected edition – perhaps because now the names of two male characters separated by a slash brings with it entirely different expectations?

(I’m reminded of Terry Pratchett’s never-quite-named character, from a tribe who are called after the first thing the mother sees after birth, who wished, desperately, that his name was Two Dogs Fighting.)

(And the very small “Vs.” on all of the online bookshots does not actually appear on the book itself, which is simply titled Batman Grendel, as if it were the product of some comic-book equivalent of a corporate merger.)

So what we have first is a 1993 story with Batman battling the original Grendel, Hunter Rose – who is in many ways something like an evil Batman, or a twisted mirror image. Rose is a self-made man, master of arcane fighting arts, and the scourge of the underworld in his hometown…although that’s because he took over in his town. Rose is incredibly violent in a very comic-booky way – he has the typical nonpowered superhero’s utter control of violence and movement, but uses it to slaughter at will.

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‘Arrested Development’ Characters Sketchbook

tobias-7610515Hidden within his massive, mind-numbingly comprehensive roundup of information about the looming San Diego Comic-Con International convention (which I intend to spotlight in at least one other post here on ComicMix), Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter included a link to something semi-related to CCI but very interesting to me — and possibly quite a few other readers.

Shown here is one of a dozen sketches Zack Smith commissioned from comic book artists at the 2004 Wizard World Chicago convention. The sketches depict characters from the over-far-too-soon television series Arrested Development, which also happens to be one of my favorite series of the last 5-10 years.

You can get the full scoop on the series and information about its potential return over at the Arrested Development page on Wikipedia, but before you do, be sure to take a peek at James Kochalka’s sketch of Tobias (pictured here and played by David Cross in the series), as well as 11 other sketches of Arrested Development characters by artists such as Jill Thompson, Jeffrey Brown, Jim Rugg and other notable creators.

… Heck, even the foul-mouthed puppet, Franklin, has a sketch.

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Review: The Complete Peanuts, 1967 to 1968 by Charles M. Shulz

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The Complete Peanuts, 1967-1968
By Charles M. Schulz; foreword by John Waters
Fantagraphics, February 2008, $28.95

By 1967, [[[Peanuts]]] wasn’t just another comic strip in the local newspaper, it was a media phenomenon. The first TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, had won an Emmy amid universal acclaim two years earlier, and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown was about to open on Broadway. It was the epitome of mainstream entertainment – on May 24th, California Governor Ronald Reagan and the state legislature even proclaimed it “Charles Schulz Day.” The strip hadn’t quite hit its ‘70s mega-merchandising heyday, but it was getting there.

At the same time, not all that far from Schulz’s Santa Rosa home, Berkley was roiling with anti-war fervor and the Summer of Love had hit San Francisco. Peanuts had been seen as an edgy, almost countercultural strip in the early 1950s, but those days were long past, and Peanuts was the Establishment. In those days, you were with the pigs or with the longhairs, right? And where did Peanuts stand?

From the evidence here, Peanuts stood where it had always stood: on its own, only rarely commenting on specific issues of the day (such as the “bird-hippie” who would become Woodstock in another year or two), but talking around those issues in ways that most of America could laugh at… some more uncomfortably than others. Schulz was never one to declare himself on one side of an issue or the other; he’d just write and draw his cartoons, and let others make their interpretations.

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The Ghost of Wertham, by Mike Gold

As comics fans, we should always be on the frontlines of the war to protect freedom of expression.

After all, it was our medium that was forced into a severe case of arrested development for a decade. Beginning in late 1940s and led by mascot psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, the Saturday Evening Post and the Readers Digest, comic book creators became seen as nothing less than child molesters and the medium was pressured into “Comics Code Authority” censorship and became trapped in its “childish claptrap” image for a generation. Hundreds of cartoonists, publishers, editors, and engravers lost their jobs; those that were among the fortunate few who remained gainfully employed told their neighbors they were “commercial artists” or some such lest they be chased out of suburbia by an angry mob.

For the past 20 years we’ve had a dangerous clown in the Senate who, when he’s not trying to get our armed forces to blast every Moslem in the middle east into smithereens (yep; it’s Memorial Day, so let’s honor our brave men and women by bringing them home from Iraq) is busy trying to raise our nation’s children on behalf of their evidently incompetent parents. Sadly, I’m talking about one of my own senators,

“independent” Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a man no more independent than Karl Rove or Dick Cheney.

Senator Joe has actually threatened artistic creators with government censorship if they do not bow to his whims. Yeah, I know, I already compared him to Rove and Cheney so telling you he wipes his ass with the Bill of Rights is kind of redundant. Joe’s spent the past two decades – and our tax money – intimidating the forces that produce video games, movies and music he doesn’t appreciate, all the time hiding under the Great Flag of Cowards, the one that reads “save the children!” Now, he’s turned his attention to YouTube. (more…)

Happy Silver Anniversary, Return of the Jedi!

Twenty-five years ago today (and six years after the original Star Wars opened) the summer movie season of 1983 blew wide open with the finale to the Star Wars saga — if you don’t count the re-releases, the three movie prequels, the multiple animated series, the books, the comics, oh, you get the idea.

And what do we remember from the film? Do we remember the escape from the Sarlaac? Do we remember the light saber duel between (spoiler) father and son? Do we remember Leia’s slave girl outfit?

Well, of course we remember the outfit. But we also remember the true heroes of the film, as memorialized here:

 


 

I think I speak for everyone here at ComicMix when I say, "yub yub".

My Week Without Comics, by Martha Thomases

You may have noticed that my quick wit and adorable charm were missing from this site for a few days last week. From May 11 through May 19, I was away on vacation. It was the first time my sweetie and I have been away alone together for more than a few days since our son was born.

Not that we haven’t been on any vacations. We’ve had great times with the boy (who, riding horses with Holly Gaiman at Walt Disney World, sang the entire soundtrack to The Lion King), and with family and friends. But I hadn’t had any time alone to roll in my sweet baby’s arms, and we needed it.

To be a real vacation, a trip should totally take you away from your regular life. It should provide experiences that are different from the day-to-day, and that help you look at the world anew. We had a few days to ourselves on our tenth wedding anniversary, in 1990, when we biked through the Finger Lakes area in New York. It was so much fun that we explored doing something like that again. Spending a week on a bicycle, riding through small towns and countryside with a group of strangers, seemed about as foreign to crowded Manhattan as it was possible to get. We decided to take the train back and forth, so we kept our energy use down and kept the money in the USA. Less guilt! (more…)

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